hard-drinking, gambling, raucous dancing, sex, and violence—all set to the “soundtrack” of blues music. The juke joints of rural South were the African American epitome of W.J. Cash’s aforementioned concept of the “hell of a fellow” ([21], p. 50), where a religious prohibition on sensual pleasures fuels hedonistic backlashes. Francis Davis points out, “The blues has never been big on moral or social uplift; the only deliverance most of its singers promise is sexual” ([29], p. 19). Bluesman Eddie “Son” House recalled, “Them country balls were rough! ... Nearly every other Saturday night or two somebody got stabbed or got shot or something” ([30], p. 79).
In one sense, we can regard the blues as contesting the community’s religious orthodoxy,
seemingly preferring the here and now to the hereafter, and the “fleshpots of Egypt” to the “Promised
Land” after death. Blues historian Robert Palmer writes, “blues singers didn’t have to respect social
conventions or the church’s shopworn homilies; they were free to live the way they wanted and to
tell the truth as they saw it” ([31], p. 17). There is certainly some truth to this view, and the lives and
songs of many bluesmen support it. Early Delta blues songs like “My Black Mamma” [32], “Shake
It and Break It” [33], and “Drunken Hearted Man” [34] attest to the sensuality of the blues and the
juke joint environment of this period. Bluesman Robert Johnson enjoyed the freedom of a traveling
musician compared to the harshly circumscribed life of a rural sharecropper, including the easy money,
drink, and women that accompanied his profession. In several of his songs, perhaps most famously
in his “Traveling Riverside Blues” (1937), he brags of his freedom of travel and sexual prowess:
“I’ve got women in Vicksburg/Clean on into Tennessee/I’ve got women in Vicksburg/Clean on into
Tennessee/but my Friar’s Point rider, now, hops all over me” [35]. In a very rural, relatively isolated
society in terms of media and travel, where the church was the absolute social and moral authority,
secular and sensual sentiments expressed in blues songs were very transgressive and alluring.
Another example of overt hedonism in the early rural blues comes from Charley Patton, who
was born around 1891 and who was one of the most popular and influential bluesmen during his
relatively brief life. Patton was not only famous for his music, but also for his womanizing and general
debauchery, which is captured in his 1929 song “A Spoonful Blues” [36], which is an ode to physical
desire and antisocial behavior. Patton repeatedly growls during the song that “All I want in creation is
a . . . ,” leaving the object of his desire unnamed. Similarly, he adds that he will kill a man, slap his
woman, slap a judge, and get in a fight “about a . . . ” leaving the cause of his aggression unnamed each
time. The song’s purposeful omissions allow the audience to fill in the blanks with details juicer than
Paramount Records would allow, and it suggests that his desires are too numerous to be contained in a
song. In a song barely over three-minutes long, Patton points toward his un-named sensual desire no
less than seven times. In sound and lyrics, the song paints the picture of a man exploding with energy
to do everything the law and church will not allow.
Because the blues defied the demands of the local church to avoid the sinful, “secular” pleasures of
the world, it came to be known as the “Devil’s music.” Angela Davis writes that “black consciousness”
in this period, “interpreted God as the opposite of the Devil, religion as the not-secular, and the secular
as largely sexual. With the blues came the designations ‘God’s Music’ and ‘Devil’s music’” ([27],
p. 4). According to the church, in the war between God and Satan for human souls, bluesmen were
casting their lots with the Devil and were active instruments of perdition. Midcentury bluesman James
“Son Ford” Thomas describes this belief: “The blues is nothing but the Devil. If you play spirituals,
and you used to play the blues, the next you know, the Devil gets in you, and you’re going to start
right back playing the blues. You can’t serve the Lord and the Devil, too” ([37], p. 5). While Son Ford
accurately describes the general community’s belief in the stark dichotomy between the church and
the blues, in fact many early rural blues musicians were not wholly outside of the dominant religious
culture or even completely hostile toward it. Despite the church’s very overt opposition to the blues,
many blues musicians continued to hold their traditional religious beliefs even as they frequently
defied those beliefs.
Blues musicians may have appeared, as Robert Palmer claims, “free to live the way they
wanted” ([31], p. 17) because that was the brash image they projected to the larger community;
